


sweet basil and ivy

by etben



Category: Crown Duel - Sherwood Smith
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21826522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etben/pseuds/etben
Summary: sweet basil: best wishesivy: wedded love and friendshipMeliara and Vidanric talk to their friends.
Relationships: Meliara Astiar/Vidanric Renselaeus
Comments: 20
Kudos: 63
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	sweet basil and ivy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).



> Thanks for your prompts, theladyscribe! Hope you were serious when you said that you liked outsider POV...

Vidanric Renselaeus is quite possibly the most intelligent man Russav has ever met.

He hides it well, of course; one has to, at court. Under Galdran, he was foppish and artistic, concerned more with the cut of his coat and the angle of his hat than affairs of state. Since the revolution, he’s been less flighty, but still not one to trumpet his own greatness around the place. He listens carefully, occasionally tapping one long finger against his chin, and says little. Gossip attributes much of Galdran’s downfall to the elder Renselaeus, but Russav knows better. Vidanric is a genius, whether or not anyone else knows it.

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. You want me to do _what_?”

A genius, and possibly also a halfwit. Russav is reserving judgement.

Vidanric sighs. “I want you to make Meliara Astiar popular at court,” he repeats.

“Meliara Astiar.” Russav cocks his head, not even bothering to make sure the angle is flattering. “As in, the woman who humiliated Debegri in front of half of the army.”

“Yes.” Vidanric’s face would probably be impassive to anybody who hadn’t grown up at court, but, well.

“Who kept you chasing your tail across the countryside for months on end.”

“Yes.” He’s so pale, is Vidanric; even the slightest hint of color lights his cheeks up like a bonfire.

“Meliara Astiar, who brought down Galdran.” A fair eyebrow lifts. “With assistance, admittedly, but—” Russav spreads his hands, shaping the fan form of _Adding Gold to Diamonds_. “What on earth do you need _me_ to do? She’s quite possibly the most popular person in the entire kingdom.”

“In the kingdom, yes.” Vidanric’s mouth narrows. “At court, though—” He shakes his head slightly. “She’s not like her brother.”

“How so?” Branaric Astiar has adapted to Court life with a buoyant, unselfconscious ease that matches the general mood. He’s quick to smile, quick to laugh, quick to admit he’s lost, and the court loves him and is bewildered by him in equal measure. Some days it feels like Branaric is leading them all in the steps of some strange new dance, the piper announcing the coming dawn, glorious and terrifying all at once.

Shame about his boots, though. Russav really should put Branaric in touch with his man; there’s no excuse for a man’s boots to look so shabby.

“She’s—” Vidanric frowns, thoughtful. “She _thinks_ more than her brother does,” he says. “About everything.”

“Do you mean to say that Branaric Astiar wasn’t the mind behind the revolution?” Russav twists his hands: _The Grass Is Green_ , feigned disbelief and gentle mockery.

“Indeed.” Vidanric’s mouth quirks in the hint of a smile, acknowledging the point. “She’s not as easy as Bran is, with herself or in company. _He_ can shrug off a misstep and leap back into the dance, but Meliara—” He sighs. “It will be hard for her.”

“And you want me to make it easier.” Russav nods. “Fair enough.”

Vidanric sketches a bow, deep and grateful. “Savona, I cannot thank you—”

“Why?” Vidanric is too well-trained to startle, but his spine goes tense and he straightens slowly, his eyes deliberately unreadable in a way that speaks volumes to Russav. “You want her to have an easy time at court; fine. _Why?_ ”

There’s a long moment of silence, the two of them considering each other, before Vidanric lets out a breath: long, slow, ruthlessly controlled.

“She has suffered,” he says eventually, his voice subdued. “Much of it at my hands.”

“Shevraeth, you know that’s not—”

“ _—at my hands,_ ” Vidanric repeats, “if not by my own design.” He looks past Russav’s shoulder. “I would spare her this pain, if I can.”

There’s more there, hiding in the set of Vidanric’s spine, the dissatisfied line of his mouth, but Russav doesn’t push. It’s too soon, and Vidanric’s always been easy to spook when it comes to matters of the heart. He’ll find his way soon enough, and in the meantime—

“You have my word,” he says, and lets his hands fall into a form he’s had little enough cause to use, these past years: _Guiding Star_ , faith and trust and unswerving loyalty.

Vidanric Renselaeus is the smartest man Russav’s ever known. If he wants to Russav to make Meliara Astiar popular at Court, it will be done.

***

The small shining one is agitated, happy-nervous-concerned-pleased, and they walk through the forest in a flurry of limbs and thoughts and desperate wanting. They are a disruption, to be sure, but compared to the rest of the quicklife they are very nearly a reasonable creature, and so we make the effort to bend close and listen, to turn their frantic chattering into something approaching intelligible speech.

_“—helped me fight Galdran, the king, the bad one—I didn’t know it, then, but we were on the same side, we really were, he understands—”_

Their mind is full of images, more quicklife, spirits twirling and twisting around each other in a dizzying blur, but two of them seem to return again and again: one squat and red and glowing with the acrid stink of flame; one pale and elegant like a young willow, bending but holding strong.

 _“—king, now, or he will be, and he helped me stop the Merindars, the kinthus, he let me come to you when he had—gods, when he had_ no reason _to trust me—”_

This is clearer: we remember the drowsy, drugging menace of the longest sleep, winding its way up the hill; we remember, too the ragged, frantic scrape of the shining one’s voice, wringing themself nearly dry in order to warn us. More images fill their mind, their words, but the bright, slender form of the willow-creature is at the center, the axis on which everything turns, the root at the heart of the tree at the heart of the world.

_“—but we did, we stopped them, and then—well, we talked, I suppose.”_

The shining one’s spirit glows, summer sunshine pouring through the branches of their heart. Can they love, then, these short-lived, quick-tempered creatures of smoke and flame? Can they know what it is, to grow gently together, to let your rough places rub each other smooth with time and knowledge and care? Not all of them, surely, not with the way they live—

—but this one, perhaps.

 _“And he wants to meet you, to thank you, and I—I want it, but I don’t know—he doesn’t_ understand, _not really, and I don’t know if he can. Life! I don’t feel that I understand you myself, not more than half the time; how can I explain you to him?_

This, then, is the heart of it: a desire to see balance between old and new, between quicklife and slow, between the flower and the branch. A good wish, and a true one. We are pleased.

It has been seasons since we strayed into the gathering-places of the quicklife; seasons and seasons passed waiting, watchful and wary. Still, it is not hard to reach out with the heart, to find the threads that bind the shining one to the willow, graceful and steady, growing patient and true. The willow is bound to us already, we find: through the covenants they have respected, yes, and through the sapling that grows in the heart of the heart of the quicklife, and through a quiet shared delight in the way the sun filters through leaves just after the dawn.

 _“—but he’ll be a good king, he’s a good_ man _, and I want—I want you to know him. I want him to know_ you.”

Mostly, though, they are bound to us through their love for the land, and through their affection for the shining one, an affection we share. Even now, surrounded by yet more quicklife, their petty concerns buzzing and blurring the air, the willow thinks on the shining one, longs for them, wishes for their nearness even as they respect the call that pulls them away.

They are very still, for quicklife. Almost restful.

_“—know what else to say, really. Except—thank you, and I hope we’ll see you soon.”_

We hope so as well, small shining one.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as ever, to [jaywright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaywright), alpha-reader extraordinaire, who read this over and reassured me that my tree people were just weird enough.


End file.
